Black Dog Blog

Archive for the ‘animals’ Category

Electroshock collars banned in Wales. Ha! In your FACE, Cesar Milan!

Sheepies in the snow

Taking home leftovers from work parties can be bad for you, Ancient Egyptians find.

Stemming blood flow to the arm protects heart during attack. Not sure if I'd dare do this as part of my first aiding…

Naughty tigie behaviour. Remind anyone else of The Life of Pi?

'Most unfortunate names' revealed. How I adore puns.

Personally, I've come across the name Pritti Mistry – which is quite sweet, actually – and know of a Jane Eyre in my family history. Of late, I have persuaded a Ms Robson of my acquaintance to call her first son Jerome. (Luckily, I'm sure she'll forget long before she should have this opportunity.)

And as a Baskerville, don't think I have considered adopting a Howard or Howell. Not that a wolfhound would understand the intricacies of wordplay, so it wouldn't be cruel.

Is Switzerland a hotbed of "Zionism and foreign aggression", then?

Children 'over-exposed to sexual imagery'. I saw Dr. Papadopoulos interviewed on breakfast news this morning. Amazingly, it was a good interview (though dumbed-down, as usual). I can't see that clip online; here's another video report on early exposure to sexualised imagery.

Giant George the Great Dane enters the record books.

Presumably they've had him measured now because 4 years is pretty long-lived for a Great Dane. Poor beasts.

edit: Brother's been on Oprah.

Hiding FAIL: German man betrayed to police by his own dog.

Springy spaniel jumps off cliff to see if she bounces.

Aerial view of County Tyrone (Ireland).

Gentlemen: bring me Superman and I'll give you One Meeelyun Dollars!

I woke up at some time after 11:00 this morning in bed with someone strange wrapped around me.

However, because I don't drink and I spent New Year's Eve with trusted friends at a safe location within walking distance of home: it was my own bed, I had a clear head, the house was secure, nobody had soiled themselves and the strange individual was the family cat¹, who had been at home listening to Jools Holland and Radio 2 for most of the night in order to block out the fireworks.

I don't own a fighter jet yet, but still, I call that a win for New Year. Happy 2010 to you all, my dear sweet little bitches.

¹I have the aforementioned chattel thoroughly alpha'd and well trained, which is why he woke me at 11:00 by snuggling up next to my head and begging wantonly for a tummy tickle, instead of at 05:00 by sitting on my chest and drooling into my eye, which is what he does to his supposed 'owner'.

• Dad's firm is making a product I think my employer would find interesting… but their website is so unprofessional I don't like to show it. #
• It's not *bad*. I'm glad it errs on the side of simplicity. It's just, y'know, FrontPage, bitmap image, jagged gifs and random animal photo. #
• Bad website can put folks off if you're a software firm, even if not a web design firm. I mean, their current main site? I built it aged 15! #
• You can tell I'm talking myself into doing a free redesign for them, can't you. Such things look like good ideas at 01:49 in the morning. #
• And I do need the experience. And I already know which public domain WordPress theme I'd use. And I do like grey and black company colours. #

(Fortunately, I went and slept after this point.)

• Enjoying @tdobson 's second Mashup! podcast: http://bit.ly/6bBqoH @jonathancoulton, #metal AND @cubicgarden = a trifecta of win. :) #
• RT @NameYourTale: The Forgetful Omniscient http://is.gd/5GAAb #microfiction #100words // Brill! I only suggested this title a day ago. :D #
• Wants to go clay pidg shooting and is reduxing some Raymond Chandler from BBC7. Twitter keeps reminding me of stuff I've been meaning to do! #
• …Or I'm a hopelessly suggestible meme host. #
• I have the house to myself for a few days. Time to go wild! Plans so far: do jigsaw, play PS2 on large flatscreen. #bohemian #

Origami Cerberus fsdrfdfsdfs11!11!!!

• RT @Anke: I think @Suitov might want to see this bit of origami: http://bit.ly/8Tkkos // SQUEE!11!!11 For @Anke: http://bit.ly/8voTKL #
• This is INSANE. I reckon I'd need A2 paper or something even to have a shot at this.. #origami #cerberus #hellhounds http://bit.ly/6A9Wlb #

Khaosdog's Bolt fan artwork.

Khaosdog is a German artist I admire. Khaosdog is great at expressing shiny lighting effects, paints fantastic fur and is canine-obsessed, which, let's face it, is always a plus.

• Have too much fun wrapping. @she_loves_tiki can guess for whom this is intended (no warning her, now!) :D http://twitpic.com/s8nsx #
• I have found something wonderful to scare the bejeezus out of my webby friends. #horror #FEAR http://twitpic.com/s8o0d #
• This is the crime known as "The Bundle of Paws". Four paws in one place. He does this DELIBERATELY to INFURIATE ME. http://twitpic.com/s8oot #
• This concludes our Twitpic/Tweetdeck experiment-cum-photodump. It didn't post the descriptions to Twitpic, though. :( #

• I am not listening to Hillary Duff singing Jingle Bell Rock. It, erm, it just fell into my playlist and I was, er, checking its teeth. #
• Uploading my video response to @isntit's Christmas video would be a lot easier if TalkTalk weren't completely useless. #
• And for everyone else, @isntit is referring to this. http://bit.ly/6KXNZP Please rate nicely. ;) #redpandas #elvis #deathmatch #

Listen up, my fuzzy cohorts.

This is the most epic thing of all time.

Please feel free to rate the video nicely and leave comments saying how fabtacular it is.

Found a cool new real-time blog, like the Dracula one but non-fiction.

Lolz, we're gonna pwn the Antarctic!

Dog 'saves' sleep condition woman

Ooh, here's one for the wishlist next to Cold Reading by Ian Rowland…

And now, Windows tips via someone on Yammer.

Clicking Start > Run (or pressing Windows key + R if, like me, you are a keyboard man) and typing the abbreviation "clipbrd" will bring up the clipboard viewer.

Clicking Start > Run and typing "flipbrd" will bring up a picture of Bill Gates giving you the finger.

Pet labrador which 'knew train timetable' dies (shut up, it is not a slow news day!1!)

Read the original story too, linked in the sidebar. That signalman is after my own heart.

Police making arrests 'just to gather DNA samples'

Colours, sounds and moving objects

HIV infections and deaths fall as drugs have impact

The worldwide stats are really interesting.

Grandmother monkeys care for baby

I bet this guy is the new football sex symbol. Ladies?

NOM!

This article also wins for coining a slightly more disturbing variant of "it's not rocket science":

"We're not building an atomic bomb," he points out. "You just have to use the right quantities, and the right ingredients."

On trams too, please!

(If someone were to give me a Wave Bubble for Christmas, chances are high that I'd wuv them forever for months.)

Mussolini's 'brain and blood for sale on internet' – presumably to frustrated commuters for vodou purposes

Astronaut on space shuttle Atlantis becomes a father – more impressive if it was "becomes a mother"…

Galileo gives Church the finger from a Florence museum. Wait, did I read that right?

Iraqi children attend a pretend maths class

On the Origin of Faeces

(Hel yes I went there.)

Captions <3

And finally, fabbydabbydoo pictures of nature pwnage.

If you don't eat your mutt you can't have any puddy! How can you have any puddy if you won't eat your mutt?!

(Picture = cutest brindle mastiff EVAR TODAY.)

Dog survives 65ft plunge into sea, looks nervously at RNLI rescuers licking their lips.

Swan

Penguin

Bat

Shackleton's whisky to be dug up

Bitter divorcees 'using children'

It's arseholes like this who should be stopped from marrying, not them scary scary gays.

Megaloceros giganteus (giant deer) starved to death during ice age. Clearly they didn't think of storing their booze in a nearby glacier.

"That means that mainland giant deer had some sort of refugia from the Ice Age before they met their ultimate extinction; they were able to move to a better environment and survive later," says Ms Chritz. BBC

And that, my UK friends, is why moose go to Iceland.

The Cat Piano, an animated noir beat poem.

This was really designed. Like KJ Parker with her special longbow, I don't want to know if it was ever built.

Rare Barbastelle bat found on the Isle of Wight

White hind caught on camera in Scotland; Queens Susan, Lucy, Kings Peter, Edmund, seen rushing to site

This article can't make up its mind whether the hind (which is a female deer) should be referred to as "it" or "she". Come on, folks, language guidelines should state that if an animal's sex is known, he or she should be referred to appropriately. Possibly non-sexually-dimorphic arthropods and small fish could be exempt, but it's stupid to refer to a queen bee or ant drone as "it".

Dog lost in Afghan battle returns. Again with the "its"! What is this rudeness? To a war veteran, no less! (Oh, sorry, Sabi, I meant to say war experienced person.)

28,000 people in the UK have black and white television sets.

You mean BCC, sigh…

Nu Labour in a nutshell:

"It is with considerable disappointment, therefore, that the government has agreed not to remove the 'freedom of expression' section."

The superstitions around opening an umbrella indoors apparently date back to the Ancient Egyptians.

Nurse shark? This one's a midwife.

Smart wife launches her own entrapment operation to catch her paedophile husband in the act. Also, they live in Pantygog.

Chile says "thanks but no thanks" to statue of authoritarian paedophile-abetting misogynist with creepy Virgin Mary fixation. Sadly not on those grounds, just because of an underground car park.

This one's fascinating: Traditional African rulers should apologise for the role they played in the slave trade, a Nigerian rights group has said.

'I agreed to become a suicide bomber' – after days of beatings and being shouted at, poor kid. I admire him.

Greek Church throws a hissy fit about a ban on "the compulsory display of crucifixes" in classrooms.

Darwin foiled by ambulance service

Lion is taken on midnight safari. Disapproves of stop signs but enjoyed drive-thru.

I'm not sure if I've ever blogged this before. It is a thing of truth, justice, beauty and win.

On Them, by Hilaire Belloc

Forest pursues 'dark sky' status. Galloway is in the south of Scotland. This would be the first certified 'dark sky' place outside the USA (which you'd think would have a natural advantage in the sheer amount of less-populated space over there).

Dolphin football off north coast

Massive killer whale pod sighted

"I'm utterly lost for words" – well shut up, then; your yapping isn't adding to the moment here!

Royal award for fold-up bike man

Swedes divided over bunny biofuel

Slightly misleading picture of a pet bunny. We're talking about dead wild rabbits. Given a bunch of dead rabbits after a cull that would have happened regardless, you can incinerate them, toss them into a mass grave or try to put them to some kind of use. Left up to me, well, somebody's doggies would have some very nice gourmet cooked meals.

Dogs who attacked child will be destroyed

I wonder how many of the roughly 50% of UK inhabitants who oppose the death penalty for humans (I know, frighteningly low number) would also oppose it for dogs.

Delay formal lessons 'to age six'

I dunno. If we can trust parents to teach and engage their kids in the meantime, that'd be good. And then there's the question of if parents can afford to stay at home and teach their kids (and in an ideal world the answer to this should be absolutely yes). Not necessarily formal lesson-style learning, but socialisation, zoo, finger-painting, all the stuff a kid needs to experience.

My concern (as usual) is about gifted kids especially, and stunted potential all around. I needed to start reading at age two, and if I hadn't had a minion on hand to teach me, it would've been rubbish.

"Everybody is used to science fiction featuring science that seems, well, not very scientific."

Er, if we're being pedantic, I beg to dub that 'science fantasy' or soft SF, not cool hard sci-fi. But continue.

Welcome to the world of sci-fi science

In today's "won't you walk into my parlour" news…

Cat Party to recruit mice, Nazi party to admit Jews, Roma, disabled people, and: BNP to consider non-white members.

Vatican to host Galileo exhibit. Sounds fabtastic. I'd like to see it.

Nice try, kid, but no cigar. Of course, he will have learned much from this preliminary attempt.

Israel taking a leaf out of the Bush administration's books. I'll be interested to see if Obama takes action on this kind of thing. America's about the only country to whom they're remotely likely to listen, and at least the "We Take the Book of Revelation Literally, Roll On Battle of Megiddo" loon squad are no longer in power.

Seal pups: look cute, but don't approach or you could cause them to starve.

Beautiful microscopy photos of blood cells and nerves.

Adults with autism 'cast adrift' in England

This, er, wow. So what are Auschwitz's five favourite singers and which Heroes character would Auschwitz be? Now we can find out. Er.

RIVAL CHILD OVERACHIEVER! It is so cute pathetic that at age 27 I still feel threatened by this kind of brat… oh man… issues. ;D

These poor kids, on the other hand, are lucky if they can learn at all.

Finally, I have to post this for you lot for the name alone. North Korea's Hotel of DOOM.

(Not to be confused with Latveria's Doctor of Doom or Disneyland's Tower of Terror, of course.)

"I felt I'd test my hypothesis and I did that by getting my cat certified by a number of the most prominent lay hypnosis organisations in the United States. It was a frighteningly simple process."

Cat registered as hypnotherapist

Look at the picture of the cat, though. That's an intense expression – every bit as convincing as Derren Brown. And less trustworthy.

'Lying down' NHS staff reinstated

Cage fighter punches out stag

Honour killings given Bollywood flavour

Uruguay approves sex change bill, jubilant blogger tries desperately not to type "You mean Uragay lol lol :D"

Cut them off with a rusty butter knife.

Derry City Council's Hallowe'en carnival encourages Satanism and has brought a curse on the city, according to a Methodist minister.

I don't celebrate Hallowe'en, but that Methodist minister has just caused me to drink some water as a proxy libation to Bau and Anubis (which I reasoned ought to count as Satan in his book). Self-important arsenoses like Rev Jonathan Campbell make Satanism look more attractive than do 19-year-old skinhead trick-or-treaters or noisy drunk people having fun.

Abortion bans do not reduce abortion rates. I'm sure pro-life mysogynists will not allow these facts to inconvenience them.

Yes they should – why don't they already?!

Berners-Lee 'sorry' for slashes, fanfiction writers up in arms

New flying reptile fossils found